Liceo Scientifico Statale Seguenza - Meet the author!

On 22nd February 2017 , our students met Silvana La Spina to discuss her latest novel " L'uomo che veniva da Messina" : they had the opportunity to interview the author and learn her views about reading and her writing creative process.

" L'uomo che veniva da Messina" is a real masterpiece, since the writer managed to successfully portray a great talented painter who had never enjoyed such popularity and fame in his wretched existence

It is set in Messina in 1479- a man is dying in his home, after months of wandering around with a coffin containing a young woman. He is Antonello da Messina, the famous Sicilian painter, who has just come back from Venice, hit by the plague. He is well-known, but Sicily doesn't acknowledge his most-gifted offsprings and Antonello knows that. For this reason,he beseeches his old master Colantonio in his last frantic moments. That delirium makes him recall his miserable chidhood and his acquaintance with the mysterious artists of Trionfo della Morte; he starts remembering his stay in Mantua, in Bruges, where he falls in love and learns the tricks of oil-painting, and, later, in Venice, where he finally finds fame and glory. However throughout his travels, only Grief, Van Eych's bastard daughter will be his light and oil- painting will be his obsession.

The novel is a portrait of that age, marked by the thirst for glory and dominated by the Angel of Death